Web based tools are more and more common, Dave and Chris are actually ok with it. The mbed tool (mentioned on the embedded call in show a bunch) is used often. Even Jack Ganssle seems to be on board in his TEM newsletter.

Lead time can severely impact product development times.

Cash flow is an important business concept, because you need to front the money in order to get parts ready for purchase. Dave has worked on projects that had up to $1M in part purchasing before a single board was manufactured.

Comments

Great show! I loved the discussion about pulling the trigger: I am guilty of always over analyzing things and delaying or blocking any releases.

This is also a tip for Dave and the Oscilloscope giveaway. IMHO you are over analyzing all this: although it is an expensive item, it is still an oscilloscope and not a life-changer item such as a winning lottery ticket. I can tell with 100% certainty that a simple draw will not be criticized by anyone and will release your mind from this paralysis – just pull the trigger of your wombulator!

How about a condition of winning the new super fancy scope is that the person agrees to pass down their old scope (if they have one) to someone who doesn’t have a scope. Or you could just piss everyone off and give them to people who doesn’t even know how to use a scope.

I thought this, build a project (or plan one) that would need this level of scopage. Or, don’t give them away, have some sort of loaner program going where you can get a loan of it for 3 months for free, just pay P&P + insurance for the duration.

idk, at first I thought Keysight marketing were just a bunch of wasteful di*ks but when you think about it; you could keep the scope (if you were real pro); sell it and buy a lab of your dreams! or sell it and cash in. any of those I guess would be fine, but you’d only want it to go to worthy forum members who had actively contributed over a few years; giving it out to a random new forum member with 4 posts would be evil, lol

The scope – I totally understand Dave’s anxiety over dropping such hi end piece of gear on someone who will never appreciate nor use it to its full potential. I have few ideas:

Remember last time Jeri was on the show and complained about debugging FPD-Link/lvds/hdmi/whatever serial digital protocols between pico projectors and her custom logic? It was pretty much impossible on anything below 1GHz BW. This is someone who could use such a scope … but Jeri is set now, swimming in Scrooge McDuck VC money :). So who else? There is someone on eevblog in similar situation, hamster_nz. He did projects like this :

Hi guys, great show! I’m getting back into personally designing gadgets, whatsits, and geehaws after too many years managing teams who did the fun stuff. Your podcast has been great inspiration as well as information. Dave, I totally relate to your feelings about lawyers but as I listened, I had to wonder if the work you turned down might have helped vindicate an unjustly accused that some big corporation was trying to have their way with. Patents should never be about who has more money.